Posts with tag progression-raiding

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Several weeks ago I wrote an article about how Blizzard could help guilds make the transition from 10-man heroic to 20-man mythic raiding. The comments on that article were eye-opening to me. In the interest of promoting dialogue about the new raiding system and supporting the guild officers who will make it work, I'd like to clear up some misconceptions.

Who deserves extra rewards?

Many commenters expressed the opinion that hard mode raiding and the best loot in the game are reward enough. No extra rewards are required.

For your average heroic raider, that is certainly true. But your average heroic raider doesn't have to do much outside of raid times, and then it's mostly just a matter of showing up prepared.

The people who deserve the big incentives are not the average raiders.

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

In the video above, Candace's friends are off having fun without her. Since she is unwilling to find her own fun, she takes a portal to Mars to hang out with strangers -- and breaks into song. There are parallels with this week's letter (except for the song part).

Hi Robin & Lisa,

I'm finally writing in with my own dilemma. Since I started playing this game in mid-Wrath, I've played with my girlfriend and our mutual friend. We have a strong bond and truly enjoy playing together, and GF and I have even met our friend IRL. In Wrath, I led our 10 man raid group, and we loved every minute of ICC. Once the Cataclysm was upon us, we expected to continue raiding. However, things rarely work out as planned, and we missed T11 completely, mostly due to the dissolution of our guild. Eventually I became frustrated with lack of progress and quit the game for a while.

In a game where tools like the Raid Finder have democratized raiding, how does the mindset of players in top-echelon guilds pushing for world firsts differ from yours and mine? How much time do bleeding-edge guilds really put in? What tricks help them push past wipes and overcome raid challenges? How do they make up time and nudge past other guilds to claim world firsts? And why do other WoW players love to follow the action?

The whole sprawling scene plays out onscreen in the feature-length documentary Race to World First -- and you can watch it free right here at WoW Insider now through Feb. 3. (The film is also available at RacetoWorldFirst.com for a small fee.)

The Looking for Group Productions film, begun back in the day when clawing to a top spot on raiding progression charts was perhaps at its cut-throat peak, follows a handful of top-tier WoW guilds in their sprint to the top. Producers John Keating and Zachary Henderson conducted some of the early interviews for Race two years ago at BlizzCon 2010's WoW Insider reader meetup, including familiar faces like WI Editor Adam Holisky and GM/actress/huntress extraordinaire Michele Morrow.

Get a peek at this film for free while you can right here at WoW Insider. Who knows what in-game challenges you might feel up to tackling after seeing that much fiery motivation in action?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen handles the shadows (and laundry.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Not a raiding tier goes by where the forums aren't littered with posts from novice healing priests asking why some well-known priest from some high ranked guild doesn't have a cookie cutter talent spec recommended by the community's leading theorycrafters. The post always goes something like this ...

"I looked up Lawliesthesiaspec from on the armory today and I just don't understand why she took three points in Inner Sanctum and only two points in Twin Disciplines. Shouldn't she max out Twin Disciplines for the extra healing? Am I doing something wrong? Should I copy that?"

Sometimes there is an amusing theory about why the priest has taken the talent, or an accusation that the player must be terrible at the game. Whatever the tone of the post, the question is ultimately rooted in the inability of many players to identify one talent spec from another. Today I intend to fix that so you're all prepared for Firelands in a few weeks.